


What He's Really Asking For

by feverishsea



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Gen, Sherlock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:15:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverishsea/pseuds/feverishsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is there a point at which too many late nights and emergency calls become a letter of resignation? How many blown off pub invites does it take before the numbers in his mobile are all out of date? At what moment does a string of failed and infrequent girlfriends shift into having given up dating? When do weeks and months and years of John halting his progress in every direction but Sherlock stop being an aberration and simply turn into his life?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What He's Really Asking For

Every once in awhile, John worries about what Sherlock will end up asking for.

Actually, that's not altogether true. It sounds better - sounds like John is under pressure; that some of his agency has been taken away from him. Sounds like the choice is not entirely his.

Sherlock takes a lot and gives very little. He asks for favors that are tiny to the point of insanity - like getting John to text for him, when Sherlock has a fully functioning pair of hands. He asks for things that are both big and small at the same time - tolerating a head in the fridge; accepting the frequent insults; putting Sherlock above his work, social, and dating life. He asks for things that are unimaginably huge - for John to risk his life on a monthly, weekly, daily basis; not even to help, just to be his companion.

But Sherlock has never exactly demanded those things, he simply stepped into John's life and assumed ownership. And John has never second-guessed it, or his own decisions. His sanity, yes; his actions regarding Sherlock, no.

It occurs to John from time to time to wonder what Sherlock sees in him (similar sense of humor? unmatched tolerance? a skull?), but he never wastes time contemplating what he sees in Sherlock Holmes. Mostly because he doesn't have a goddamn clue.

John used to live his life in three dimensions - present, future, past. He used to take in the events around him, line them up next to his impressions of the past, and wonder what it meant for the future. Now, he lives only in the present, in an impossibly bright and demanding _yes-no-go_ that cannot last. Normal people do not live like this, dropping everything to run off after crimes and only getting paid half the time.

This can't go on forever, but he isn't sure what he'll do when it ends. He isn't actually sure that he can remember what it was like not to live like this. So John just keeps pretending that things will last from one moment to the next, and with every second that ticks on into his present he falls deeper and deeper into this other dimension where nothing exists but John making tea while Sherlock experiments with lab equipment stolen from St. Bart's.

Every once in awhile, though, John can't help but look at the sum of Sherlock's demands, and his perfect record of compliance. Then his brain will try to examine their relationship. His mind will sift through memories and search desperately for boundaries; for some sort of breaking point. It is dangerously close to both the past and the future and John would prefer to ignore this train of thought. But on nights when his leg bothers him and he can't sleep, John is forced to privately acknowledge that he doesn't seem to have any limits at all when it comes to Sherlock.

So the question isn't so much what John will be required to do, but what Sherlock is really asking for in the first place.

Is there a point at which too many late nights and emergency calls become a letter of resignation? How many blown off pub invites does it take before the numbers in his mobile are all out of date? At what moment does a string of failed and infrequent girlfriends shift into having given up dating? When do weeks and months and years of John halting his progress in every direction but _Sherlock_ stop being an aberration and simply turn into his life?

John isn't really comfortable thinking about these things. It's too close of a lens and it feels far too much like sentiment. But around the edges of these thoughts there are undeniable feelings. Nostalgia, for simpler days. Shame, for the goals he used to clench tight in his fists, and the way he has opened his hands and willingly let ambition trickle through the space between his fingers. Guilt, for the life he knows he should be living but isn't - won't.

Sometimes, if he looks too hard, John can see flashes of scenes that almost, might have, could happen. They come when he's doing something mindless; watching the telly or reading the news. Sarah, dying on the floor of some dirty warehouse as John kneels helplessly by her side and Sherlock snarls, "I was fine; you should have helped her first." Bodies, a lot of bodies and John's not sure exactly how many because he's so used to this now, it was self defense even if Sherlock did go racing into danger on purpose, and one more body doesn't really matter, does it? Himself, sitting in a chair waiting patiently for days, weeks, months, years, because before Sherlock left he said, "Stay."

John stares at the paper far too long and then turns his head, as if the words printed on the page are the images in his mind and he can ignore them the way he ignores the gossip column on page twelve.

John is fairly certain that he is alone in these thoughts, which is something of a relief. If John lives in the present now, Sherlock _is_ the present; there's no space in his mind for idle speculation on unknowable or unchangeable things. Besides which, Sherlock's never been much interested in John as a person. If John wants to work, or drink, or date, or have disturbing thoughts, Sherlock doesn't really care until it inconveniences himself in some way. There is a comforting privacy in living with someone so selfish.

And after all, in the end, does any of it really matter? John doesn't know what Sherlock will ask for or demand or want, but he doesn't have to. He knows his answer.

It is not a loving family, or a fulfilling career, or the promise of a happy life. But it is something. There is comfort in that. There is order in that. There is purpose in that.

Then John's mobile buzzes in his pocket. AT STATION. COME NOW. SH.

John accidentally knocks the newspaper onto the floor, and the dregs of his cold tea join it when he yanks his jacket off the table one-handed. He pauses and decides to leave it; the mess can be attended to later. John strides out the door, leaving his thoughts behind him with the paper, and tea slowly melts the ink off the pages.


End file.
